On Louis C.K., “Fat,” “Not Fat,” and the Importance of Holding Hands

On Louis CK, “Fat,” “Not Fat,” and the Importance of Holding Hands

“You know what the meanest thing is you can say to a fat
girl? That ‘you’re not fat.’”

At 5’4” and about 167 pounds, according to my last Wii Fit
weigh-in, the digitally-rendered Mii version of myself and I are firmly within
the Orange Alert “overweight” category, according to both the federal
government and the fitness experts at Nintendo. Granted, those same Nintendo
engineers freaked out an entire generation of female high school athletes when
the Wii Fit made its U.S. debut in 2008, by telling them they too were
borderline obese. However, my Mii (which is automatically plumped up according
to my real-life gravitational pull) and I are not confusing muscle mass for
extra LB’s. The worn-through holes in the inner thighs of my Old Navy Rock
Stars are frustrating evidence enough for my pear-shaped, student-budget self.
And though I don’t aim to lose the two dozen or so pounds my now-antique video
game console recommends, primarily because I would simply look weird, it would
be nice to throw on a shirt and jeans without worrying if my navel is peeping
through the gap at the bottom of a button-down.

That being said, I’m not sure if I am seen by others as “fat.”
Several people (excepting grade-school bullies and a particular ex-boyfriend)
have specifically informed me that I am “not fat” Obviously the spectrum of
body shapes is highly variegated, but my place on it has long been difficult
for me to define. So, while watching the latest episode of Louie this past Monday, I found myself identifying more than I
initially expected with Vanessa, the above-quoted “fat girl,” especially during
the episode’s poignant closing, when Vanessa elegantly calls Louie out on his
well-meaning and perhaps unintentionally backhanded bullshit. It was a rare televised blow struck on behalf
of the “fat,” the “not fat,” and everyone else who — like Louie and Vanessa
both, as they stroll into the sunset hand in hand, understanding each other
through touch as much as humor — runs around in potentially lovable and
routinely devalued skin. Rather than digressing into an oversimplified binary
of what is and is not considered attractive, the episode skillfully alludes to
vagaries of personhood that extend beyond weight. Being a fat girl in the
dating world sucks, Vanessa says, breaking a taboo of what she isn’t supposed
to say, but so does a range of characteristics that might mysteriously
reclassify someone as supposedly unworthy and unwanted.

Vanessa is a sharp-witted server at the West Village comedy
club where Louie is a regular. After she catches Louie’s set one night, she
tells him she loves “seeing him up there,” though she “hates comedy.” (She
herself is clearly more talented than at least one of the male comedians shown
on stage; Louie observes her cracking up Ed Burns and hobnobbing with Dave
Attell.) Vanessa is honest, hilarious, attractive, and fat. She forthrightly
asks Louie out, but he begs off, saying that “he’s tired.” “Oh my God, are you
going to be okay?” she says, forehead wrinkling with over-concern. “You should
have said something before, I didn’t know you were tired.”

It’s also implied that Vanessa is better at her job than
employees like the pretty, slender young blonde named Sunshine, who shuts Louie
down when he clumsily asks, “Is that really your name?” Dealing with a crabby customer
waiting too long for his check, Vanessa says, “I’m not your waitress, but let’s
go find her and kick her ass.” If I didn’t want to be friends with this
fictional person from her first appearance, I definitely wanted to from that moment
onward.

Vanessa’s approach with Louie reverberated with my own so truly
that I cringed while watching her give him thousand-dollar hockey play-off
tickets because she’s busy on game night, and subsequently convince him to grab
a cup of coffee with her, with the implied caveat that it’s not exactly a date. (She still pumps her
fist in victory.) As far as spending time with another human being goes, Louie
and Vanessa’s not-date is enviably good. They obviously click on several
levels; later, Vanessa tells Louie that if someone were watching them from a
few yards away, they would see a great couple in action. Yet, throughout his
interactions with her, you can see the half-fictionalized Louie/Louis trying to
process conflicting input and impulses. Here’s a woman who is fun, clever,
generous to a fault, and who genuinely likes him, his gastronomical “bang bang”
adventures notwithstanding. Dave Attell seems to vouch for her. And Louie
himself is “nobody’s bargain,” to quote the Boss. So what’s the problem? We’re
all riders on this train, and there’s no mercy in this town, so why is what
Vanessa’s asking too much?

The answer might lie in Jim Norton’s one-word reaction when
he sees Vanessa at the club: “Yuck.” After all, what could be more disgusting
than a compelling woman who would accept Louie as he is, without forcing him to
conform to an artificially higher standard? Tellingly, Louie says nothing. That
moment foreshadows the conversation he and Vanessa have about calling dating
“trying” at the end of their vague hang-out session. “Try dating as a fat girl
in your early thirties,” she tells him, inviting his wan, conciliatory
contradiction, “You’re not…you’re…”

“Oh Louie,” she sighs, already disappointed before he says,
“You’re not fat.”

Thus begins Vanessa’s wrenchingly honest monologue about living
as a fat girl in New York City. “Why do you hate us so much?” she asks,
admitting that she’s choosing Louie to represent “all guys,” as she is
representing “all fat girls.” “What is it about the basics of human happiness
— you know, feeling attractive, feeling loved, having guys chase after us —
that is not in the cards for us?” This is something I have mulled over many
times, openly challenging my late mother’s installed voice that tells me, as
she did when I was an intense high school junior, I have “everything a man
could want,” a lingering and enigmatic phrase.

“If I was ‘very, really beautiful,’” which Louie calls
Vanessa post-“not fat,” “then you would have said ‘yes’ when I asked you out,” she
says, adding that the “high-caliber” guys flirt right back with her, because
they know their status and social power won’t be compromised. Meanwhile, the “regular”
guys, including the great Louis C.K., refuse to bat an eyelash at her, “because
they get scared that they should be with a girl like me. And why not?” What is
dangerous about being with a person like Vanessa, an overweight but confident grad
school nerd like myself, or any number of the amazing women I know, who have a
variety of bodies and somehow routinely become friends with men they like, instead of lovers? A lack of mutual
attraction is one thing, but repeatedly falling into the “she’s great, but…” category
causes a person to start asking questions more frequently. Meanwhile, the warm
embrace of gentle rejection that Louie describes as a special female talent at
the beginning of the show, and which he employs himself, becomes less and less
comforting.

And as the episode clarifies, it’s not a matter of sex. “I
didn’t ask if you ever fucked a fat girl,” Vanessa tells Louie. If she had
simply offered a quickie in the stock room, she says, he would have jumped at
it. Vanessa then lays it on the line, speaking for many: “I can get laid —
any woman who is willing can get laid. I don’t want that. I don’t even want a
husband or boyfriend. I just want to hold hands with a nice guy, and walk and
talk.” Louie finally takes her hand, and as they amble toward the horizon, he tells
a fat lady joke, the best possible ending to the show.

Part of the episode’s brilliance lies in exploring why that
simple, public display of intimacy can be so threatening, especially when the
person on the other end of the held hand is, according to the sliding scale
implemented by our societal hive brain, demonstratively imperfect. Sarah
Baker’s portrayal of Vanessa incisively tackles the interwoven, rat-king-like
nest of issues surrounding culturally-approved body images and actual desire,
but the genius in Louie’s writing is
that “fat” could, with minimal adjustment, be swapped out for a range of
alleged flaws. This is a specific story, but with threads that tie it to a
number of all-too-human experiences.

A few years ago, on what would become the most surprisingly
romantic evening of my three decades plus on Earth, a friend of mine suddenly
changed the game and opened my heart just by taking my hand as we walked down
the street to a party. Unfortunately, this took place in London, and more
unfortunately, said friend still lives and teaches in one of the world’s most
famous college towns outside of the UK’s bustling capital. An Atlantic-sized
ocean of time has now passed, stretching the endurance of perceived destiny and
slowly eroding whatever true feeling passed between us.

Since then I have had enough spontaneous and short-lived
adventures to keep a girl occupied, but maybe too often I’ve returned to the
thought of that night, and that feeling, especially because, as one of my male
friends said recently while discussing the vicissitudes of dating, “You do have people who like having sex with
you.” Sure. Most of them have been “good guys,” as Vanessa describes Louie. Sometimes
they’ve even bought me coffee or walked me to the subway the next morning.

But rarely have they held my hand.

Kathleen Brennan is a history PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center.Occasionally she writes and edits non-academic things at her home in Brooklyn, NY.

Louis’ immediate reaction is to tell her that she’s not fat, but Vanessa, who knows she’s fat and is okay with it, isn’t having it and proceeds to deliver one of the best dressing downs ever seen on television.